I have read the FAQ, the ToI and searched the forums, but I am still confused by feats in RTL. I wish to start using them in our campaign but am worried about balance. What I am looking for are 2 things:

1. to make sure I understand the rules correctly: Heros start the campaign with # of feats = to the # of skills on sheet. Does this mean they start by drawing like they do for skills and discard down to one or keep all of them meaning they may start with 2-4 feats according to the character sheet skill #'s. In case 2, doesnt it seem like alot of feats to start with? Then they draw one feat per hero per glyph they activate?

2. to make sure we dont unbalance the game: Most people play Feats RAW as of the FAQ changes? or is there a better way to ensure balance? It seems to me it would be very easy to collect the max 4 feats per hero very quickly (possibly starting with this many), giving the heroes the opportunity to play feat cards very qucikly. I am not convinced this would not make things too easy for them. I am looking for opinions from players who have experience with feats in RTL.

Thanks for your time and sorry for a possible reposted question.

Heroes start with 1 feat, the same type as their 1 skill. Whenever they activate a glyph, each hero may draw 1 feat, chosen from any type that matches their *current* skills.

For Road to Legend.

Karui_Kage said:

I thought the FAQ said to start with the "normal mix" ie 3 Feat cards based on the skills available to you? So you would start with 3 and draw 1 per glyph.

Also, Heroes can only draw from Feats that match their original, printed skill set. So for example, Landric the Wise can never draw a Melee Feat card even if he trained and gained a Melee skill.

Big Remy said:

The 1 feat start was an idea tossed around by some of us before Kevin Wilson made the ruling to just use feats normally in RTL

Like a lot of other folks, our playgroup initially decided to start with 1 feat card at the start of the campaign, before the official ruling told us that players started with 3.

So, just to be clear: the official ruling is that the players each start with 3 feat cards, and draw 1 each time a glyph is opened. Feat cards can only be drawn from decks that the heroes originally received skills from.

Hm, the FAQ says "Start with the normal mix", which sounds a bit curious for RtL.

In Vanilla, it is three for all heroes, but four for Arvel, I guess.

So, as an analogy, I would say the heros receive one starting Feat for their starting skill.

Parathion said:

Yeah its once again an example of bad rules language. Depends on what he meant by "normal mix". I've always taken that to mean "Start with the 3 Feats cards, then its 1 per glyph" for RtL. I mean in RtL you would still draw all your starting skills, but you only get to keep one.

Bravo McWilley said:

I suggest looking into alternative balancing still myself. Once your heroes figure out that they should all draw subterfuge (those that can) so they can exhaust the deck and keep cycling the "disarm trap" cards immediately, they pretty much neuter your traps entirely.

pinkymadigan said:

1. Case 2. See the answer to 2.

2. Before the FAQ we felt feats would definitely be unbalancing. Since the FAQ we play RAW and it balances very well. The loss of Telekinesis more than balances out the gain of Feats. The game is more interesting for both sides and there are more options for the heroes (instead of the same overly good option all the time). We played for a while with a variety of trial houserules for Feats before the FAQ was released. None wer as satisfactory as RAW.
Note there are a bunch of fairly useless feats (most of the time - every feat has an application sometime) so it is not a bad thing to be able to stock up a reasonable number of feats fairly quickly.

3. I disagree utterly. The anti-trap feat is limited. The Magic Feat 'Preventing Evil' is far more powerful and far more useful (but there is only 1). The most useful feat I have found is in fact the Magic Feat 'Carried by Air'. That has saved me a lot of dungeon turns on at least three occasions - the Icy Tunnels level from ToI, the Secret Garden Level from ToI and the final level of the Silver Legendary dungeon. Flying fast over a Gold Giant Boss with grapple (using another hero and a beastman to avoid the grapple) completely blocking the corridoor was priceless. WIth no Acrobat and my Knockback weapons specifically targeted by Crushing Blows, it was the only way past for me. The Sweeping Blow with a Reach weapon is fantastic for a melee hero. The Lunge has done great work, especially when Guarding (surprise!). Sparks of pain is just awesome in bronze level, especially on a dodging Stealthed character!
In short, there are extremely useful feats in every deck, as well as rubbish feats in every deck. I definitely would always try to get a spread of feats in my part, and possibly emphasis Magic over Subterfuge

Can you define RAW for us noobs?

EDIT: Rules As Written?

SoylentGreen said:

BINGO!

Corbon said:

You are free to disagree, but there are two Disarm Traps which means the heroes can keep two on hand and keep the subterfuge deck low enough so that they are sure to pick it up with one draw. It hampers the party's hands a little, but if you have Arvel in play, it pretty much guaranteees this is done the entire game, which means that unless heroes roll a surge then don't roll a blank they are avoiding most of your big traps. While Preventing Evil is better, having only one copy means it's harder to keep in circulation, plus magic is a deck less heroes have access to (I think - could be wrong - could just be the mixes of heroes I've faced). Either way, once they have that deck down to just a few cards you can gaurantee you are not getting any big traps off.

Thanks for all the input guys. I guess the consensus so far is that RAW feats according to FAQ is how most play then? Except for 1 or 2 people, most of you are reporting that it should be balanced well. I suppose we should just try it and see.

My big concern is that I tend to find the game from both sides of the table very balanced now, without feats at all, and that by adding feats in such huge numbers that we would be tipping that balance too much in favor of the heroes. But since no one really reported such concern, again except pinkymadigan's possible exploit, we will just have to try it.

Thanks.